1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator: Part 2

1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator: Part 2 from Hemmings Muscle Machines

Usually when you drop your engine off at a machine shop, the machinist doesn't offer to put it back together without pistons.

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But that's just what happened to Eric Petosa when he went to have the Boss 302 engine from his 1970 Cougar Eliminator rebuilt. He had already assembled a complete set of NOS gaskets for the 290hp race-bred V-8, but told the rebuilders at Haberek's Machine in Amsterdam, New York that, as long as the engine didn't have any cracks or any major deformations, to reassemble it without machining it.
"They suggested leaving the pistons out because I never planned on running the car, but I wanted it all in," Petosa said. "I figured if I ever had to start it up for a judge, it would have to run and it would have to run right."
So he had the engine rebuilt with original 10.5:1 compression ratio aluminum pistons, original forged steel crankshaft, original mechanical camshaft and original Boss D0ZE 609A cylinder heads.
When it came to the Holley 780cfm four-barrel carburetor (you guessed it, original) he decided to send it to the best Holley carburetor restorer he could think of: Holley carburetors. "How are you going to beat Holley?" Petosa asked. "I know that they'll give it the correct plating and finishes."
The original Boss-only dual-point distributor, along with the original cast-iron exhaust manifolds and a mixture of NOS and original smog parts completed the engine.
Petosa sent the wide-ratio Toploader four-speed transmission to Dan Williams at Toploader Transmissions, just to have Williams go through the gears and internal workings. Eric buttoned it up when he got it back with NOS gaskets and seals. He sent the factory Hurst shifter to Williams as well, who plated the linkages correctly and supplied the original-style brown bushings rather than the current aftermarket-style black bushings.
For the body of the Eliminator, Petosa applied three different paint removal techniques. On the large expanses of sheetmetal, such as the hood, roof and trunklid, Petosa used Eldorado aircraft paint stripper to remove the paint and primer because any blasting method may have heated and warped the sheetmetal. Petosa blasted the rest of the body, however, with Black Beauty abrasive, shot with the same 175cfm Sullair air compressor that his construction company uses to power jackhammers.
"When you're sandblasting, the bigger the compressor, the merrier," he said. "I used Black Beauty because plastic media isn't really the way to go--it gets in all the nooks and crannies and primer won't stick to the metal after you blasted it. And baking soda doesn't really strip that well."
After stripping the body, Petosa then wire-wheeled the body, both to smooth out the sheetmetal and to remove any traces of paint, primer or rust that the blaster might have missed.
"When you wire wheel the metal after blasting it, you only have to use one or two coats of primer to get a smooth finish rather than the six or seven coats of primer you need if you just sandblast and don't wire wheel," Petosa said.
Rather than jump directly to the paint process, Petosa at this time reassembled the entire body of the car and spent a couple months making sure the gaps where the different panels met remained even. He said he did so at this point for two reasons--one, to reduce the amount of bodywork necessary as well as the chance of scratching or chipping painted body panels during the fitting process, and two, so he could make his scribe marks in the bare steel rather than in the primer or paint.
"Bob (Perkins, of Perkins Restoration in Juneau, Wisconsin) thought I didn't need to make sure everything was perfectly lined up because Cougars are not necessarily perfect from the factory," Petosa said. "But I wanted mine perfect."
Petosa also opened up the front control arm torque boxes while the car sat in bare metal in his converted horse barn. "This area usually goes bad on these cars, so I cut it open diagonally and peeled it back," he said. "I wanted to avoid drilling out the spot welds--you can't accurately reproduce those. I blasted and sealed the metal inside the torque box, then welded it back up and smoothed the weld over."
Though Perkins recommended leaving the seam sealer alone, Petosa had sandblasted it all out of the car, so he started with that. The most difficult seam sealer to find, he said, was a special flexible type that sealed the gap where the fenders mounted on their aprons. "The original stuff is grey, and the stuff 3M sells today only comes in black," he said. "I got lucky and found some NOS still in the box and called Perkins right away to ask him if he needed any. You also have to make sure it squishes out where the bolts push together, so that it's not uniform."
At the factory, Mercury dipped Cougars first in a red epoxy primer. Petosa didn't have a vat big enough, or the budget for enough epoxy primer to fill the vat, so he found an acceptable PPG epoxy primer and had Perkins apply his custom color mix to replicate the color of the factory epoxy primer. Petosa said he shot the primer using his SATA spray gun and 18hp Ingersoll-Rand air compressor. "The trick to getting all the water out is in the piping," Petosa said. "I still have filters, but no filter will get all the water. You have to run all the pipes in steel, and that'll keep the water out."
Ford blacked out the engine bay of every Boss 302 car in a specific stain finish. Petosa said enamel paints actually produce too much sheen for this application, so he shot the entire engine bay in black lacquer paint, paying careful attention to where the overspray landed under the cowl.
Petosa then applied two coats of PPG gray primer to the top surfaces of the Eliminator, but avoided spraying it on the underside, along the lower few inches of the body, in the interior and in the engine bay. He block-sanded the gray primer, with the body disassembled on Perkins' advice, starting with 80-grade sandpaper and working his way down to 400. "I would have gone farther, to 600, but then the paint wouldn't have stuck to the primer," Petosa said.
With the Eliminator's body mounted to the Foothills Welding Roto-Body rotisserie, Petosa then flipped it over and began to apply Lime Green Metallic basecoat in overspray patterns typical of the factory. He then switched from the SATA spray gun to a special Italian-made pressure-fed gun designed and built just for applying undercoating. Petosa said Perkins wouldn't sell or loan his undercoat gun, so Petosa had to buy the $600 tool straight from Italy.
"The bottom of the car I did all at once and separate from the rest of the car," Petosa said. "That probably took a year just by itself."
Petosa said the most difficult part of the restoration came next, after flipping the car to paint the top side. Cougars all had a slight degree of orange peel from the factory, as Perkins related to him, and failing to replicate the orange peel results in an immediate three-point deduction in Mustang Club of America judging. So, after researching the grain of the orange peel, Petosa then practiced, experimenting with a variety of air pressure settings and paint thicknesses until he felt he had it right.
With the plastic sheeting hung in his horse barn, water running on the floor and his friend Dave Casazza assisting, Petosa began spraying, ultimately laying down three basecoats and four clear coats. Because he sprayed a metallic paint, Petosa said he had to hang the doors, trunklid, fenders and hood in their respective positions on the car to make sure the metallic paint lined up from panel to panel. To preserve the orange peel, Petosa couldn't--and didn't--sand any of the base or clear coats. A real high grade paper--around 2000 grade--can take down some of the orange peel, but Petosa said he got the grain right the first time. Casazza did rub the car with 3M Finesse rubbing compounds.
Petosa said he then spent the next two to three years reassembling the Eliminator according to the meticulous notes he took during the disassembly process. "While I had everything for the car, I wanted it to be perfect, so any piece that wasn't, I looked for an NOS replacement," Petosa said. "As the reassembly progressed, the NOS pieces got more expensive and harder to find." In the end, he said he retained about 50 percent of the original parts and sourced the other 50 percent from NOS sources.
The interior he sent out to American Classic Restorations in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, where Petosa said he spent $10,000. The rear leaf springs he sent out to restorer Jim Cowles. The nuts and bolts he sent to Electro-Plating, Inc. in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, on Perkins' advice. Perkins also painted many of the brackets, which Petosa said Ford and Mercury originally slop-painted in huge vats of the day's leftover paints. Slop-painted parts thus aren't necessarily any one color, ranging from nearly black to light gray, so Petosa said he left the decision over what colors to slop-paint those parts up to Perkins.
Perkins also loaned Petosa a full set of ink stamps, obtained from the factory, to replicate the ones that Petosa documented earlier. However, he didn't have the correct carburetor ink stampings, and Holley didn't provide those, so as a final touch, Petosa had restorer Mike Ulrey apply the carburetor markings at the Eliminator's first show.
Since finishing the Eliminator in 2005, Petosa took numerous first-place show awards, including Best of Show at the Cougar Club of America's 2005 Eastern Nationals in Virginia and Gold at the 2005 Boss Nationals in Carlisle.
Considering that he never drives the Eliminator, let alone race it as it was originally intended, does it make sense for Petosa to have spent this much time and money (five years and an estimated $100,000, not counting his own labor) on this car?
Looking at the results, we say he shouldn't have done it any other way.

This article originally appeared in the July, 2007 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.